Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Ultimate Origami



Check out this video showing three amazing creations by master origamist Satoshi Kamiya. Hard to believe, but each of the pieces shown in this video was folded from a single sheet of paper.

The red dragon, made from a 1.2 x 1.2 meter sheet, took only 6 hours to fold. The yellow hornet was commissioned by luxury retailer Hermes and was put on display in their New York store. The white dragon is fashioned from a 2 x 2 meter sheet of paper. “As far as I know, it is the most complex origami in the world,” says Kamiya in the video.

Check out Kamiya’s gallery for photos of his other paper creations.

(stolen from Pink Tentacle)

4 comments:

Mr Goodson said...

I could do that if I got to use scissors

Tom Moon said...

Incredible. I assume one of the self-imposed rules of classic origami is no scissors or tearing, but it's hard to figure out how he can get those shapes without doing that. I wonder if wetting the paper, then warping or stretching it is allowed. Too bad the video is in Japanese.

Skribbl said...

The dragon is amazing!!! At first glance the scales look cut but if you watch the video theres a shot near the end where you see him actually folding each scale. The link to his gallery I believe also shows the folding diagram if you click on a model. I'm still in awe.

rickart said...

Yeah, my fingers are bleeding just watching that guy fold each of the little scales.

What I would find even more impressive is if the white dragon and the wasp can actually hold up their own weight unaided.

I heard an interview with a guy that wrote a book on this extreme sort of oragami and he says that a lot of it is just playing around with pieces of paper and letting your imagination run wild.

Perhaps part of it is thinking of a piece of paper as a sort of blanket... you can wrap a blanket around a form and it can take on that shape yet still be a single, contiguous piece of fabric.